Which battleground state voters could influence the election?

It’s no secret that Americans’ political feelings depend on race, ethnicity, education and age. But what makes presidential elections so competitive is how these demographic groups often balance each other out.

In 2024, this delicate balance is essential to understanding the seven battleground states where, according to pollsthe presidential race is the closest. In the last election, several of these states were decided by fewer than 40,000 votes. Since then, they have together added about 1.3 million potential voters, and the smallest shifts in sentiment or turnout among certain groups could be enough to change the outcome of this election.

To better understand the demographic forces at play on the battlefields, The New York Times examined the 2020 contest and compared precinct-level results with census data to offer estimates on who voted and how they voted . We looked at race and ethnicity, age, education and geography to identify key trends and groups in each state. (Gender is another growing factor in partisanship, but it is not part of this analysis.)

What to watch President Biden’s winning coalition relied heavily on Latino voters, who made up about a quarter of those who cast ballots in 2020, a number that will likely increase in this election. But even though the state’s Latino voters have generally favored Democrats, no group is monolithic.

Experts say Latinos have weaker political attachment than other non-white groups and could be persuaded to change their vote. Additionally, a significant portion of this group is made up of young U.S.-born Latinos who will be voting for the first time, and their sentiment is less predictable. Recent surveys have shown former President Donald J. Trump making gains young people and voters of color.

Mr. Trump’s greatest support in 2020 came from white voters aged 35 and older. This group accounted for about half of the votes cast, in part because of the sheer number of white retirees in the state.

For Democrats, there are potentially more votes up for grabs. In 2020, there were more votes for the Democratic Senate candidate than for Mr. Biden. “Voters who voted for Mark Kelly but decided not to vote for Biden or Trump could have decided the outcome of the race,” said Samara Klar, a political science professor at the University of Arizona.

What to watch Georgia Democrats have long been guided by the “30/30 rule,” a term made popular by University of Georgia political scientist Charles S. Bullock III. He says for Democrats to win, black voters must make up 30 percent of all voters and at least 30 percent of white voters must vote Democratic.

Black voters, who would have cast almost a third of the vote in 2020, overwhelmingly favored Mr Biden – by almost 90%. But that reliable base of support appeared to dwindle earlier this year, and it’s a group that experts say Vice President Kamala Harris needs to energize and enthuse. About 850,000 Black residents of Georgia did not vote in 2020.

“If you have anemic turnout among black voters, that will be the death knell for the Democratic ticket,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University.

Both parties will also seek to attract a growing share of white voters with bachelor’s degrees, a group whose votes would have been almost evenly split between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in 2020.

What to watch In 2020, Mr. Biden won Michigan handily — at least by the standards of a battleground state.

But Mr. Trump performed very well among white residents in suburban and rural communities, who made up nearly two-thirds of voters in the 2020 election.

Democrats’ strong performance among non-white voters and in Detroit’s suburbs helped erase Republicans’ advantage in small-town suburbs in 2020. But even as black voters overwhelmingly supported Mr. Biden, they were a relatively small group – about 14% of voters. those who voted. And experts say black support for Democrats could be declining in Michigan.

“There’s definitely an attitude that they’re not represented, relative to their population and their outsized role in the Democratic Party,” said Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University. He mentioned Detroit, a majority-black city that has no black representation in Congress. “The feeling is: How much attention are you giving us? And to what extent do you take us for granted?

Disillusionment among the roughly 3 percent of Michigan voters who are Muslim and Arab-American — a traditionally strong Democratic constituency — could also make a difference this year. Many of these voters have expressed their anger and frustration with the Biden administration’s support for Israel in the Gaza war, and some have said they may choose to sit out those elections or vote for a third-party candidate.

What to watch Nationally, education is a major political fault line, with college-educated voters much more likely to support the Democratic Party and less-educated voters favoring Republicans. But Nevada is the main exception to this rule: Democrats have won the last four elections there, despite the state’s relatively small share of college-educated voters.

Indeed, education level primarily divides white voters, and many of Nevada’s least educated voters are non-white. Mr. Biden won about half the vote among people without a four-year degree in Nevada, which is atypical for the country as a whole.

In recent years, inflation has hurt working-class voters, and concerns about the economy could make it easier for the Trump campaign to eat into the Democratic advantage among blue-collar voters of color.

“Nevada is a little different animal,” said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, pointing to the state’s low voter turnout, high diversity and more transient population. . “All of this means that there are a large number of untapped potential voters who could be mobilized. »

What to watch In 2020, North Carolina gave Mr. Trump the narrowest lead of any state he won. Rural voters, who made up nearly a fifth of the total, contributed to Mr. Trump’s victory.

But North Carolina also has many small towns with a strong partisan divide between city dwellers, who favor Democrats, and suburbanites, who favor Republicans.

For Democrats to flip the state, they need to lose fewer votes in rural areas and increase voter turnout in smaller cities, like Greensboro and Asheville, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University .

“If we see a slight movement away from Trump in rural areas, that’s really important,” he said. “The map will still show these locations in red, but these differences can mean the difference between winning and losing.”

What to watch As in other states, education plays a significant role in the partisan divide in Pennsylvania. White voters without a bachelor’s degree made up nearly half of the total, and they favored Mr. Trump by an estimated three-to-one ratio in 2020. Even so, it wasn’t enough for him to defeat the coalition of white incumbent voters. ‘a college degree and voters of color who delivered victory to Mr. Biden.

The other important factor is geography.

Mr. Trump dominated rural areas and small towns across the state, as well as the suburbs of Pittsburgh. But Mr. Biden performed well in Pennsylvania cities and the Philadelphia suburbs, areas that accounted for more than 40% of the vote in 2020.

Wisconsin saw a similar geographic divide among voters. Most of the support for Mr. Trump has come from the state’s more than 1,000 small towns and the outer suburbs of Milwaukee.

But the fastest-growing part of the state There is one area that increasingly favors Democrats: suburban Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin’s main campus.

In 2020, turnout in Dane County, which includes Madison, was 89 percent.

“This is one of the highest turnout counties in the country,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Survey. “The question for Democrats here is: Is it even possible to remove more votes from Dane County?